Digital Natives: life cycle of a digital dossier

Digital Natives: life cycle of a digital dossier

The Digital Natives Reporters in the Field series changes tactics this week with a narrated slide show from intern Kanupriya Tewari. The piece explores the accumulation of data -- the expanding digital dossier -- through the life of a fictional digital native.

This week we’re taking a break from all the interviews to give you a glimpse of the world of Digital Dossiers. Your dossier is made up of all the digital tracks you leave behind – from your photos on Flickr, to the Facebook messages you send, to all the data your credit card company collects about your transactions. On a daily basis, digital natives are consistently leaving information about themselves in secure or non-secure databases. You probably do this without a second thought in you day-to-day life – but have you ever considered the amount of information being collected about you, or the extent to which this information spreads?

In this video, created by Kanupriya Tewari, we explore this issue from the perspective of a child born today – Andy – and the timeline of all the digital files he accumulates in a life span.

Come back every Wednesday for more multimedia on online privacy, cyber bullying, digital activism and more!

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Stay tuned for more Reporters in the Field episodes that, by doing and creating, explore the themes of the project and of John Palfrey and Urs Gasser's forthcoming Born Digital. And join in the exploration by commenting in text or video on the Digital Natives blog or YouTube channel.